What Great Men Have Said About Women Part 9

She is meek and soft and maiden-like....

A young woman fair to look upon.

_Life of Schiller._

My dear mother, with the trustfulness of a mother's heart, ministered to all my woes, outward and inward, and even against hope kept prophesying good.--_Reminiscences._

Women are born wors.h.i.+ppers; in their good little hearts lies the most craving relish for greatness; it is even said, each chooses her husband on the hypothesis of his being a great man--in his way.

The good creatures, yet the foolis.h.!.+--_Essay on Goethe's Works._

She is of that light unreflecting cla.s.s, of that light unreflecting s.e.x: _varium semper et mutabile_. And then her Fine-ladyism, though a purseless one: capricious, coquettish, and with all the finer sensibilities of the heart; now in the rackets, now in the sullens; vivid in contradictory resolves; laughing, weeping, without reason,--though these acts are said to be signs of season.

Consider, too, how she has had to work her way, all along, by flattery and cajolery; wheedling, eaves-dropping, namby-pambying; how she needs wages, and knows no other productive trades.--_The Diamond Necklace._

Thought can hardly be said to exist in her; only Perception and Device. With an understanding lynx-eyed for the surface of things, but which pierces beyond the surface of nothing, every individual thing (for she has never seized the heart of it) turns up a new face to her every new day, and seems a thing changed, a different thing.--_The Diamond Necklace._

Reader! thou for thy sins must have met with such fair Irrationals; fascinating, with their lively eyes, with their quick snappish fancies; distinguished in the higher circles, in Fas.h.i.+on, even in Literature; they hum and buzz there, on graceful film-wings:--searching, nevertheless, with the wonderfullest skill for honey; _un_tamable as flies!--_The Diamond Necklace._

Nature is very kind to all children, and to all mothers that are true to her.--_Frederick the Great._

She is of stately figure;--of beautiful still countenance.--A completeness, a decision is in this fair female figure; by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country.--_French Revolution._

A clever, high-mannered, ma.s.sive-minded old lady; admirable as a finished piece of social art, but hardly otherwise much.--_Reminiscences._

Who can account for the taste of females?--_The Diamond Necklace._

A Beauty, but over light-headed: a b.o.o.by who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed, and cooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged and blew one another up.--_Boswell's Life of Johnson._

With delicate female tact, with fine female stoicism too, keeping all things within limits.--_Frederick the Great._

A true-hearted, sharp-witted sister.--_Essay of Diderot._

A graceful, brave, and amiable woman;--her choicest gift an open eye and heart.--_Oliver Cromwell._

Every graceful and generous quality of womanhood harmoniously blended in her nature.--_Life of Schiller._

She is a fair vision, the _beau ideal_ of a poet's first mistress.--_Life of Schiller._

Heaven, though severe, is _not_ unkind; Heaven is kind, as a n.o.ble mother; as that Spartan mother, saying while she gave her son his s.h.i.+eld, "With it, my son, or upon it!"--Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain.--_Past and Present_.

VICTOR HUGO.

All her face, all her person, breathed an ineffable love and kindness. She had always been predestined to gentleness, but Faith, Hope, and Charity, those three virtues that softly warm the soul, had gradually elevated that gentleness to sanct.i.ty. Nature had only made her a lamb, and religion had made her an angel.--_Les Miserables._

She was the very embodiment of joy as she went to and fro in the house; she brought with her a perpetual spring.--_Toilers of the Sea_.

Her entire person was simplicity, ingenuousness, whiteness, candor, and radiance, and it might have been said of her that she was transparent. She produced a sensation of April and daybreak, and she had dew in her eyes. She was the condensation of the light of dawn in a woman's form.--_Les Miserables._

The woman was weak, but the mother found strength.--_Ninety-Three._

Woman feels and speaks with the infallibility which is the tender instinct of the heart.--_Les Miserables._

What is a husband but the pilot in the voyage of matrimony? Wife, let your fine weather be your husband's smiles.--_Toilers of the Sea._

No one knows like a woman how to say things which are at once gentle and deep. Gentleness and depth,--in these things the whole of woman is contained, and it is heaven.--_Les Miserables._

Beauty heightened by simplicity is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a beauteous, innocent maiden, who walks along unconsciously, holding in her hand the key of Paradise.--_Les Miserables._

She had the prettiest little hands in the world, and little feet to match them. Sweetness and goodness reigned throughout her person; ... her occupation was only to live her daily life; her accomplishments were the knowledge of a few songs; her intellectual gifts were summed up in her simple innocence.--_Toilers of the Sea._

The coquette is blind: she does not see her wrinkles.--_By Order of the King._

A mother's arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep soundly in them.--_Les Miserables._

There are moments when a woman accepts, like a sombre and resigned duty, the wors.h.i.+p of love.--_Les Miserables._

She was pale with that paleness which is like the transparency of a divine life in an earthly face.... A soul standing in the dawn.--_By Order of the King._

He looked at her, and saw nothing but her. This is love; one may be carried away for a moment by the importunity of some other idea, but the beloved one enters, and all that does not appertain to her presence immediately fades away, without her dreaming that perhaps she is effacing in us a world.--_By Order of the King._